Ask and you’re at least in with a chance of getting!
We often suffer in silence thinking what’s the point in asking, or we don’t even realise that we need help and asking someone could solve a problem, or worse still we’re not worthy as our self-esteem gets the better of us. Learning the art of resilience also involves being willing to ask others for help and support when we need it and being okay if we don’t get what we’re asking for.
A common phrase handed down in our house was ‘if you don’t ask you don’t get!". Unless we make it known to people what our needs are, we are expecting them to mindread our thoughts and will be left bitterly disappointed having missed our opportunity.
I remember when our council house was being demolished to make room for new housing. My partner and I loved our house but hated where we lived. It certainly helped to build our resilience living there, although it was an incredibly unsafe and scary place to live with high crime, low income, overt selling of drugs on the streets, and gang murders most weeks.
We had to move and were looking at areas which had a chance of giving us a better quality of life. Like most big cities, there were good, bad, and ugly. Given the council was desperate to rehouse us we took our chance at asking to live in one of the most affluent communities in the suburbs of our city and on the edge of green belt land. There was just one street in the whole neighbourhood of council housing.
We dared to ask if we could be considered for a place there but were advised that given in the area people didn’t really give up their home unless they die or go into a residential care home the chance of one coming up was very low. Believe it or not, just a couple of weeks later we were offered a property on that very street and moved in just weeks later. What was the chance of that happening?
This was a once in a lifetime opportunity for us which allowed us to feel safe, secure, have a garden, buy a car, and enroll in a course that enabled us to go to university i.e., we could do all the things we could never have been afforded before living in the sire situation that we were in. And all because we dared to ask!
What will you be brave enough to ask for today?
